Bergen - Thursday - fire evacuation

Usually days that start with a fire evacuation aren't great days. It definitely wasn't an ideal way to wake up when around 7:30 we repeatedly heard the announcement that there might be a fire in the hotel somewhere. About two minutes later, they'd made up their minds (found the source of the alarm I guess) and told us to evacuate immediately. I was alreay dressed and Antonia only needed shoes, so we grabbed our bag (it's interesting to see how quickly you realise that the only things that are important are camera, money, iPhone and of course each other). We left our room on the 9th floor and as soon as we were outside we saw and smelled the smoke, so definitely no false alarm.

Fortunately we'd been using the stairs before, because the elevators always took incredibly long to arrive and so we knew exactly where we had to go which was good because it wasn't just straight down but we had to cross the hallway on the fourth floor and find the other stairs. We ran down the stairs with a few other women and even though it wasn't obvious how serious it really was I was very scared. Survival mode kicks in quickly. At the bottom there was one horrible moment when it seemed that the escape door was locked but then I managed to push it open and we were outside the hotel.

The fire fighters had just arrived and lots of other people were pouring out of the main entrance. It seemed that they'd only evacuated the 9th floor though, but there wasn't much communication. After about 15 minutes the firefighters came back out and people started to go back in. We went back up to our room and there we saw the source of the smoke. Right next to our room a panel was down on the floor and there were lots of wires hanging out that must have melted or something.

Because we were booked on a tour that day we left again right away. I was both happy to leave, it didn't feel safe to stay in the hotel and worried because we had to leave all our stuff behind without knowing anything. In the end we never found out more, one of the things that really bothered me about the management of the hotel...

We decided to skip breakfast at the hotel and went to the coffee shop in the main station where our tour "Norway in a Nutshell" was supposed to start soon.